“Have you met someone that’s run in a bunch of marathons? An amazing feat, surely, but so often you find they’ve got one bad knee, or one bad hip, and eventually had to stop running because of it. When the structure is off, the part, back, hip or knee, never get the chance to heal. Of course the body is always doing it’s very best to heal injured parts, but when the structure is off, even slightly, the injury is ongoing. If a hip or knee is misaligned, every step creates more injury, more irritation to the tissues.

More often than not, arthritis is the body’s attempt to protect a chronically injured joint.”

The body adapts the very best it can to every injury, every change, every postural distortion and every subluxation. The adaptation is often the swayed back, the forward head, the scoliosis, or the humped back.

“If one hip or knee doesn’t move as well as the other, it’s often the body’s way of telling us that the pelvis is off. You are not aligned well, and it’s manifesting in that particular joint or area. Unless there’s been a recent specific injury to that joint, it’s likely been going on for years or decades. Even if there’s been an injury, and provided the joint is still intact, it should have returned to full function and mobility. That’s called healing. But if it doesn’t return to healthy, full function, you must ask why, and you must understand the principle of subluxation. And the answer lies in faulty mechanics.

There are many ways to improve the health of your body and mind. All over the world, there are many, many tools. Chiropractic happens to be the most direct. By direct, I mean that it’s very objective is toward freeing the brain and spinal cord, allowing the innate intelligence of the body to better express itself. It’s one of the wisest and most profound healing tools available to mankind today. Its simplicity and practicality apply to every human being alive today. Why? Because the spine and nervous system are central and primary, and there’s been so much damage to them from birth on.

“What you find when you improve the spinal mechanics in a human being is that everything else improves. No matter what the disease, syndrome or condition, every person, under every circumstance improves. The body and mind are stronger, heartier and healthier. They have to be! You have improved the integrity of the central nervous system; everything has to work better.”

Now that is not to say that every disease or condition will go away. There are too many factors. But the very first thing that should be examined with any disease is the spine. It is the gateway, the electrical panel and the lifeline.

Every aspect of life improves; behavior, mood, outlook on life, the ability to smile and laugh all improve with chiropractic care. Why? Because the communication system inside the body is improved.”

This is another reason why chiropractic works best from birth. If someone’s spine is subluxated for a day, and that person gets adjusted, that’s OK. If the subluxation is left uncorrected for a month, that’s not OK. And if it’s been present for a year or a decade, it’s really not OK. Actually, it’s very bad, and it creates a diminished life.

If an individual is subluxated from birth, his body does not get to develop and re-organize properly from that point on. The difficulty or dysfunction may manifest physically, emotionally, mentally or socially. Subluxation is big. Disruptions in the major nerve pathways of the body affect the body and mind in an untold number of ways. Why? Because the nervous system is the master system. It’s what ties all the many parts of the body together, allowing harmonious function of organs, glands and systems.

Subluxations make people less alive, less agile, less mobile, less coordinated, less fluid, less adaptive, sicker, weaker, depressed immunologically and neurologically, and diminished emotionally, intellectually and socially.

As a person receives chiropractic adjustments, his body functions with more ease. The individual moves more gracefully and the body is freer to heal properly. Isn’t that what people really want? Isn’t that better than taking a drug to temporarily lessen symptoms? Healing is so much more than just trying to get rid of pain by numbing the brain and body. Pain and symptoms are simply the tip of the iceberg; they’re not the problem itself.

Regular chiropractic care is one of the simplest and easiest things you can do to be healthier. It’s also one of the best values. For what you pay, you receive one of the greatest dividends that life has to offer, a better functioning body and mind.

A proper functioning central nervous system is right up there with the other essentials for health; love, fresh air, fresh water and fresh food. It’s just the least known and understood.

Chiropractic care cannot be compared to anything else. It is the location and correction of vertebral subluxation to allow proper function of the brain and spinal cord. Every part, every cell, organ, gland and system of the body works better when the central nervous system is not compromised by common spinal injuries.

The Vertebral Subluxation

Understanding the vertebral subluxation is the very heart and soul of chiropractic. You’re going to hear a lot about it over the next few years, but that’s good, because it’s going to be a HUGE part of your life. Without a great understanding of the subluxation, you will never understand the essence of chiropractic.

So, just what is a vertebral subluxation? It’s a change in the position and/or mobility of one or more vertebra. It’s a spinal joint injury that the body is unable to correct fully on its own. It’s the response of the body to physical/mechanical, chemical, and emotional/mental stresses and trauma. It is an effect of an overload of these forces on the body/mind.

X-rays don’t always show a subluxation because a subluxation is dynamic (like the entire spine and nervous system). The best way to prove the presence and validity of vertebral subluxation is to OBSERVE people. From this moment forward, you should – and will - become a master at viewing posture, tone, tension, balance, movement, breath, grace and ease. As your perspective on these things broadens, it will become increasingly upsetting to see how messed up so many people’s spines are. Really messed up. Hopefully, that will fuel your fire to teach and adjust as many people as possible in your lifetime.

You’ll get so good at studying people that you’ll even get insight into their lives and ailments just by observing their spines (and tone, posture, etc.). This is insight into a unique part of the philosophy of chiropractic – the relationship between structure and function in the human body. Why is it so unique? Because virtually no one else sees this, especially in medicine.

Example: About 20 years ago, a sixty-five year old woman came into my office. During the consultation, she told me that her right kidney had been surgically removed a few years prior. When I asked why, she said that none of the doctors ever found out why her right kidney gradually shrunk in size and eventually stopped working altogether. She was very wealthy, and went to the finest kidney specialists in the US and Europe. For years, she endured hundreds of x-rays, CT scans, MRIs, sonograms, IVPs, and extensive blood and urine analyses. I asked her if any of the doctors had checked her spine, specifically at the level of T12 and L1, and she said no. X-rays demonstrated severe degeneration at that level, and when I palpated her spine there…OUCH!

The point is that NONE of these brilliant medical people even considered the nerve supply to the kidney. After all, the nervous system is the master system of the body, right? Shouldn’t it be considered FIRST? This is why chiropractic is so important to a sick and suffering humanity – because no one else thinks like we do!

I see two different types of subluxation. The first is the individual bone displacement or misalignment, altering nerve function and body and mind function. This osseous type of subluxation is usually due to a specific physical trauma (birth, accident, etc.).

The second type is more devastating to the function of the nervous system body and mind of the individual, and that is the multi-segmental subluxation. This type shows itself with a forward head carriage or a torqued pelvis or spine. It often appears very subtle, but its effect on the body is often dramatic. It is usually the result of physical trauma (singular or multiple) or an overload of chemical, emotional or mental trauma (stress). I’ve heard this type of subluxation called a meningeal subluxation, a facilitated subluxation, and torqued dural occlusion. In the 1950’s, medicine described it as adverse cord tension or adverse mechanical cord tension. What we call it is certainly less important than our ability to see and understand it.